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Album Review:
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Thursday, February 28, 2013

Album Review: The Advent Equation – Limitless Life Reflections

My love for technically-demanding modern metal means I often find
myself writing words that might convince those browsing the web that I
am concocting some magnificent, scientific conundrum. In the past, I
have come across albums by The Omega Experiment, TesseracT, The Mars
Volta, The Mercury Program and The HAARP Machine. Now, here I am writing
about The Advent Equation. It’s enough to quantum your mechanics.

These particular modern metallists come from Mexico. Yep, the home of
tequila and tortilla. It’s often thought of as a bit of a metal
deadzone, though when you consider it’s vicinity to the noisy hotbed of
North America that’s always seemed surprising. Early run-throughs of Limitless Life Reflections
prove The Advent Equation are obviously keen to put that idea to bed
with their accomplished combination of prog, death and tech metal.
Seriously, you’ll struggle to believe this hasn’t come from the cold
heart of Scandanavia (I’m not in the least surprised to learn it did
pass through Jens Borgen’s Fascination Street Studio at one point on
it’s journey).

Take “Afterlife Evolutionary”. It opens with a tumultuous broil of
drums setting the rhythm, over which is laid a bloodlusting death roar,
quickfire finger taps, dramatic piano and cutaways into melodic synth.
From here, we are dragged through a rapid series of menacing,
instrumental affectations and lurching timing changes. And that’s just
one track. It’s clear that getting to grips with this ever-changing
mixture of musical techniques and emotional tones is going to be no easy
task. Other tracks like the floating melancholy of “Visons Of Pain” and
“Hopeless” don't dig down so far and are less obtuse in their design.
They are recognisable songs and, as such, are a little easier to gain a
foothold on.

Tracks like “Glimpse Of What May Be” and “A Descent Into The Unreal”
will grab you with their depth of sound. The three-part vocal harmonies
and hammering switchbacks that underscore it all are intense, anthemic
and at their apex, truly awe-inspiring. However, with so much that meanders and
lollops around these momentary snatches of genius, it’s hard to
fully get behind the songwriting – “On Darkness”, for instance, sweeps
from the dull, inane and metronomic into an overpowering smack of
twinkling synth and back again through an unnatural series of segues.

The album, as a whole, is best thought of as a series of tonal shades
ranging from black to grey and back again. Opeth and Enslaved
influences run close to the surface throughout this chameleonic
collection of death-led monsters and lighter harmonic pieces with
piano-dominated and stringed acoustic sections, though it’s also not
hard to spot the connection with several of those aforementioned more
tech-minded acts. The rhythmic anomalies and ambient texturing are, in
fact, key to driving home the heart of the piece. The question is: are
you hungry for Mexican? – a trip to their SoundCloud page should give you plenty to chew on.